Together, with students, we operate as an active and engaged community of visual artists and historians of art’s rich past. We spend our days thinking critically about how the visual arts shape society and how our own contributions as makers and historians might further crucial conversations that animate the world today.
The department is housed primarily in Boliou Memorial Hall, which contains dedicated studios for painting and drawing, photography, ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, woodworking, metalsmithing, and interactive electronic art as well large and small classrooms for lecture courses and seminars. We also teach and learn at our sawmill, wood kiln, and soda kiln near the Arboretum. In addition, we hold drawing courses at the Weitz Center for Creativity, as well as use spaces in the Weitz Center to study objects in the Perlman Museum’s permanent collection.
Carleton’s art students have access to state-of-the-art equipment to realize their creative goals; this is evidenced by the success our graduates have in crafting deeply meaningful studio practices after graduation, with many of them entering MFA programs. Our art history students, too, regularly enter MA and PhD programs, while others go straight on into a wide array of fields in and outside the arts after graduation.
Every year the Art & Art History Department sponsors off-campus study programs exploring the arts in numerous contexts and locations. Beginning in 2028 every third Winter Term, students can further their interests in drawing and printmaking while travelling in the South Pacific. And beginning in 2029 every third Winter Term we will host a program that explores the rich architectural history of Western Europe, as students travel from Italy to Spain and then to London.